Reports of my restlessness in Southeast Asia are not greatly exaggerated

2010.02.09

Musings on friendship bridges and rush to build them

It always amuses me to read about “friendship” bridges, the ones that tie Thailand and Laos. The two peoples are natural constituents, sharing a similar language, culture and geography. The two Thai-Lao bridges, at Nong Khai-Vientiane and Mukdahan-Savannakhet, are symbols of their ties.

A third one is under construction (Artist's sketch, right). The first was finished in 1994. The next was in 2006 and third, based on news last weekend from the Lao government, is three or four months ahead of schedule. The bridge linking Nakhon Phanom province, Thailand, on the west bank of the Mekong, and Tha Khek, Khammouan province, Laos, according to project coordinator Xaysana Fasavath, will be finished roughly the end of summer 2011. It’s 30 per cent completed overall. Immigration facilities are also being built.

A fourth is about to get underway in March. It will link Chiang Rai province, Thailand, with Bokeo province, Laos.

That’s three major bridges linking the two countries in the span of about 8 to 10 years. The third was begun in May 2009 and will be finished in 2011. I’m guessing No. 4 will be finished in 2012, a similar two years and handful of months. What’s the rush?

Laos, with such a small population of a bit over 6 million and a few agricultural and metals exports, couldn’t afford a couple of planks across a creek. But it never seems to be short of infrastructure cash for such things as highways, railways, bridges and hydroelectric projects. Funny that, but they all seem to connect China and Vietnam, with the south, namely Thailand.

And this just in, Thailand is supplying more than $300,000 for a design study for a rail link inside the Lao border, running the roughly 17 km from Tha Na Lang to Vientiane, the Lao capital. (A Thai-Lao overnight train from Bangkok runs to Nong Khai, where you go through Thai departure immigration, get back on and cross the Lao border to Tha Na Lang for Lao arrival check-in. You guessed it: no further rail line into the city, but it looks like there will be. Thailand is covering 30% of the funding and offering a low-interest loan for the rest, according to DPA, the German news agency. By the way, March 5 is the first anniversary of the Thai-Lao train.)

If you marry up this little generous gift to the Lao PDR with the announcement by Thai PM Abhisit that it recently signed various memorandums of understanding with Lao for its future electricity production (from controversial Nam Thuen Dam 2), well, you get the obvious. That’s small scale.

China is playing big and for the long-term. If you were a big exporting country with a big bottleneck on your southern border, namely Lao, plus the Mekong, you might try to do something about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if a fair hunk of Chinese money is being spent and will be spent on clearing the bottle neck. (Japan has put a lot of money in these bridges, too -- all over SEA, in fact.)

With three new bridges and one old one connecting arterial routes through Chiang Rai (future), Nong Kahi, Nakhon Phanom and Mukdahan, south- and northbound traffic some day will increase. The region, at first, could serve as a thoroughfare, with possible subsidiary industries and maybe even factories setting up.

Suddenly, my amusement turns serious. It wouldn’t surprise me that China is manipulating everything in its favour. But I guess the Southeast Asian nations will ultimately benefit. I hope the Isaan people will benefit, too.

5 Comments

1.

I have yet to visit Laos. But after depending on car ferries in Borneo for six years, I can see where they would benefit. Cueing up just to cross a river gets old. Fast. And we had two rivers to cross.

They had a bridge between Brunei and Sarawak for years, but only the connected could use it. This was due to the ferries being owned by royals = cha ching!

When a family drowned in their car after being nudged over into the river while waiting in line for their turn, a cry of justice went out and POOF we could all drive over on the bridge.

Rick, not only is Mukdahan sleepy but if you would have closed your eyes for 10 minutes while on the bus you would have missed it!

The bridge is just on the outskirts of town and every time I have been by it I have never seen anyone crossing from either side. The Mukdahan side has a huge parking lot and buildings before the bridge that are always emty as well.

Rick I hope your thoughts and guesswork come true. Isaan could do with the investment of big money into factories and with it employment. In my opinion Bangkok is just too big in comparison to the rest of the country and for too long now the northeast of Thailand has had little in the way of development. Being near the Laos border and with the massive rise of industrial China could mean the building of these bridges are the impetus to kick start the region into life. I hope, I pray but unfortunately I think I know the answer lies in Talen's comment.

That's a very interesting theory, Talen. I wouldn't be surprised if that's part of the equation. But why else do nations build cross-border links? I'd guess it's to further trade and position oneself (Thailand) to benefit from future development and need to transport goods from another (Laos).

When I bused through Mukdahan on the way to NP, I almost got off there because it looked like quite a peaceful spot. I certainly didn't know the river (and bridge) were so close by. You certainly couldn't see much traffic. Sleepy indeed.

I don't understand why they keep building bridges unless they are an emotional response to underlying diplomatic problems.

The friendship bridge in Mukdahan sees very little traffic at all. Mukdahan was being hailed as the new Thai/Lao hub and it was expected to draw a lot of people. Neither has happened. Perhaps in the future things will change but as it stands now Mukdahan is the same sleepy little town it's always been aside from the night market.